The major challenges in treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, kidney cancer, head and neck cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer are to improve early detection rates, to find new non-invasive markers that can be used to follow disease progression and identify relapse, and to find improved and less toxic therapies, especially for more advanced disease where 5 year survival is still poor. There is a great need to identify targets which are more specific to the cancer cells, e.g. ones which are expressed on the surface of the tumour cells so that they can be attacked by promising new approaches like immunotherapeutics and targeted toxins.
The inventor has shown BST1 to be expressed on monocytes and granulocytes, both of which can be associated with and activated in diseases such as asthma, gout, crohns, lupus and diabetes. Monocytes are also implicated in the development of atherosclerotic plaques. BST1 has not been previously reported to originate from acute myeloid leukemia (AML), B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, kidney cancer, head and neck cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer or pancreatic cancer cell membranes and represents a protein of new therapeutic and diagnostic value.